Google Glass journalism course coming to USC (continued)

In the video, he also said it’s not fair to contrast Glass with smartphones or dismissively compare it to other devices that, like the segway, momentarily grabbed the tech-world’s attention only to fizzle into an expensive joke.

“But this is something,” Hernandaz said. “And the only way to find out what that something is, is to play with it.”

The “something” lies in the realm of augmented reality, providing news content to go with what a user is seeing at any moment. Another example, Hernandez said, could be taking video recordings of user experiences and incorporating those into news coverage.

Students in the Glass Journalism course will work in teams to develop news apps, according to the course’s syllabus. The apps will then be user-tested and published at the send of the semester.

“This class is a sandbox for journalism, technology, and creativity,” the syllabus reads.

While Google Glass has been praised as an innovate step forward in wearable computing, it has also been criticized due to privacy concerns. Journalists in particular have been quick to characterize the device as intrusive, or even as simply being too dorky.

“Glasshole” has become a popular descriptor and Twitter hashtag among technologists and reporters to describe the technology’s early users.

Hernandez said some of that negativity has been directed at him, but he said journalists shouldn’t be so quick to judge Glass.

“When have we, as a journalism industry, ever benefited from dismissing emerging technologies?” he said.